display all the ideas for this combination of texts
2 ideas
| 16885 | To understand a thought, understand its inferential connections to other thoughts [Frege, by Burge] |
| Full Idea: Frege famously realised that understanding a thought requires understanding its inferential connections to other thoughts. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (works [1890]) by Tyler Burge - Frege on Knowing the Foundations 1 | |
| A reaction: If true, this is probably our greatest advance in grasping the concept of 'understanding' since Aristotle - but is it true? It is a striking and interesting idea, and central to the importance of Frege in modern analytic philosophy. |
| 7154 | We can't use our own self to criticise our own capacity for knowledge! [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: A critique of our capacity to know is nonsensical: how should the tool be able to criticise itself when it can, precisely, only use itself for the critique? It can't even define itself! | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[87]) | |
| A reaction: I am inclined to answer that it seems impossible, but it happens. Thinking about ourselves is the hardest part of philosophy, but phenomenologists and others (starting with Descartes) have had an impressive crack at it. Nietzsche was good at it. |